Twitch sucks up more peak traffic than Hulu and Facebook

Following Twitch’s record-breaking 2013, the San Francisco video game streaming company can now count itself among the top tier of American tech companies.

Twitch produces more peak traffic than Hulu, Facebook, Valve, Amazon, Pandora, and Tumblr, according to a new study by the analytics firm Deep Field, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. The only companies beating Twitch are some of the most recognizable in the world: Netflix, Google (including YouTube), and Apple. That’s not bad company to be in.

Companies like Facebook and Amazon don’t stream video, so it is important to take that context into account when thinking about these numbers. However, Amazon has a dedicated video streaming service, Valve offers massive game downloads and video, Hulu streams television and movies, and Pandora streams music. The recent study suggests that Twitch is stepping above them all in terms of peak traffic.

While Twitch accounts for 1.8 percent of peak Internet traffic, the top three sources of traffic are drastically larger, illustrating the wide gulf that exists between those Internet titans and other streaming companies.